What Do Souls Really Give You?

[Axelgear]

Something interesting you might want to consider about ghosts is that their Virtue/Vice don't invert, to my knowledge, as happens with soul loss. Make of that what you will.

[Arcanist]

I'm reasonably certain a Werewolf can be Soulless- idigam can tear out souls and eat them, but they need specialized Servant Forging in order to do it to a werewolf. If we go back to the old analogy of Soul = Jello and what you're terming a Socket = Jello Mould, I think we get the following.

Mage Based Assumption #2- Gnosis (and/or other Power Stats?) allows you to shape the Socket.
Attainments warp it, and Legacies more so. Getting a Sleeper soul shores up the loss of Gnosis and therefore the loss of Attainments, but it doesn't "grow back" unless you replace your lost soul with an Awakened one. So, thinking about that, if a Sleeper soul is Jello, then an Awakened Soul is a non-Newtonian fluid. The Jello gets roughly shoved into the Socket but can't fill it properly, while the non-Newtonian fluid conforms to the shape of the Socket and makes it a perfect fit.

This seems to fit with what we know of Empty Wolves from Werewolf. You can shove a Spirit into a Werewolf's socket, but the Spirit's ephemera doesn't flow and conform to the Socket, so you can't carve new Gifts in there. A Werewolf Soul is fluid, like a Mage soul, so if you hammer out (or in this case, brutally carve) new shapes into the Socket it will flow into it.

Outcome #5- Mage Souls (and other Esohuman Souls?) are more fluid than Human Souls
This explains why Ghost Mages tend to be a little more lucid than regular Ghosts, and it explain how they're able to retain the use of Arcana. Without the "shard of the Abyss" attached to the transformer, the Ghost is still imprinted with the Supernal Symbolism that was pressed into the socket. I wonder what would happen if you shoved an Awakened soul into a Sleeper? Probably turn them Banisher, since the Socket doesn't conform to the shape of the Soul, and so all the patterns and symbols get smushed and misshapen. Alternatively, it's a shortcut, and the "shard of the Abyss" is still attached to the Socket.

[AceOfAlmonds]

And What About The Gamelines?
• Everyone else? *shrug*

• Prometheans do not yet have a soul. They have a knock-off from Principal Co., which mostly functions the same way, but, well, sometimes it leaks battery acid where the water should go, and that's pretty bad for the system. Prometheans can slowly modify them, though, and ultimately can get them to a point where it stops being actively harmful.
• Demons don't have sockets. Their Covers do, though. Instead of a soul, they put themselves in the socket. This mostly works, but it changes what counts as a shock to the system, as the Demon expands past the socket and mucks with the human system itself. (Can a Cover leave a ghost? These assumptions imply yes! But also that a Demon will not leave a ghost, because Demons are souls. Kinda.)
• Expanding on Changelings: said after-market modifications tend to come with removals and a few leftover gegaws. Said gegaws, when combined, can function like a soul, but lack the elasticity and repair functions of a normal one, hence why Fetches tend to be...off.

[amechra]

I'm going to do something a tad... unadvised.

Namely, I'm going to make up some stuff regarding how souls fit.

Assumption #1: Humans have a Socket
I've called it a "soul hole" before - it's a place where ephemera can interface properly with a physical structure. It makes humans pretty vulnerable to being possessed and Claimed.

Assumption #2: A Human soul plugs into that Socket
A soul is made of ephemera (c.f. Werewolf); therefore, it logically plugs into the Socket.

Assumption #3: Integrity Loss is mental damage
Or, rather, it represents your mind running into situations that it was not designed to process - intense fear, revulsion, or the Supernatural. Lost Integrity is your mind literally shaking itself to pieces. Plus, Ghosts can only lose Integrity if they are somehow shaken out of their loop - which itself precludes processing information that falls outside the Ghost's operating specifications.

Assumption #4: Ghosts are the leftovers of your mind, not your soul
Think about it - nothing in either the soul loss or ephemeral entity sections mention anything about soul loss preventing you from leaving a Ghost. Ghosts also have a Vice and Virtue - which are not part of the soul (otherwise, you'd lose them when you lose your soul). By vague inference (my professor would murder me for these leaps of logic)... well, see the assumption.

Assumption #5: Vice and Virtue being swapped is the human default, just like only recovering Willpower through Virtue and Vice
You lose your soul? Your Virtue and Vice swap. You die and leave a Ghost? Virtue and Vice are swapped. Soulless people and Ghosts also can only gain Willpower through their Vice, Virtue, or a True Friend (see next).

Flaw #1: True Friend?
I'm not sure how True Friend recovering you Willpower works with this - mainly because it doesn't have any sort of explicit interaction with Soul Loss and I'm reasonably sure that they were written by different people. I dunno about this - so I'm going to ignore it for now.

Assumption #6: Your Vice is "dirty"
If we look at Assumption #3, actions in accordance with your Vice give you a penalty to your "prevent mentally damaging myself" rolls. Not having a Soul is actively worse - by analogy, it's like pumping salt water through your mental plumbing. So Willpower recovery through your Vice somehow contains some sort of gunk that ultimately stops up your Willpower recovery.

Outcome #1: The soul is a patch
The soul is designed to fix the whole "shake itself to pieces" flaw that the human mind has. It fits into the Socket, throttles your Vice recovery, and expands what you recover from your (cleaner) Virtue. It also patches in Willpower recovery through surrender, designed to prevent people from getting into situations that cause their minds to break.

Outcome #2: The soul is a repair mechanism
The soul also cleans out your mental tubing - that's why you rapidly recover Willpower dots and Integrity after getting a new one installed. That's what rest is - you can do more because your mind is squeaky clean.

Outcome #3: The soul is a defensive mechanism
For one, it fills up valuable Socket real-estate that other Ephemera might otherwise grab onto. It also acts like a transformer between your mind and Twilight, giving you limited control over that massive amount of resonance you create - hence, the reason you can fuck ephemeral beings up by believing in something really hard.

Mage-Based Assumption: Supernal Magic is not within human operating parameters
Supernal magic is a hella nope. Oh, sure, the mind gives off the symbols, but they're all basilisks. So you need a proper translator for your brain to process them without going "fuck it", shutting down for a few seconds, and booting from a previous save.

Outcome #4: The soul protects you from the Supernal
Much like how it lets you manipulate resonance, the soul lets you manipulate Supernal symbols defensively. That "shard of the Abyss" that's in there is attached to the transformer - so that Resonance you give off also fucks with the imago of anyone trying to Mage in the area.

And What About The Gamelines?
• As far as I can tell, the only Gamelines that can be Soulless are Mages - unless I'm wrong, in which case enlighten me.
• For vampires, the Beast moved in and ate your soul. Good thing it can pull off the same functions! By extension, Diablerie is you eating another Vampire's Beast.
• Werewolves have that Socket filled in and wallpapered over; or, arguably, they didn't have it in the first place.
• A Changeling soul has extensive after-market modification so that it could work in Arcadia. Thank God Machine that thing has no warranty in the first place.
• Mages? Easy. They essentially modified their soul to work properly with Supernal symbols, and have an emulator for the things installed in their minds.
• Everyone else? *shrug*

[ajf115]

Souls also seem important/tied to Sekhem... somehow.

In my interpretation of Sekhem, it's the stuff left behind when a soul is released by death. Without a body and mind or some kind of arcane support (like, for instance, a soul jar or even the spell that ripped it out), the soul collapses like water without a cup. The 'collapsed' soul is Sekhem and, with a bit of arcane assistance, the 'soul-stuff' can be re-purposed into energy and used to do stuff. Like grease the wheels of the God-Machine or power Mummies or fuel Utterances or stuff.

[GibberingEloquence]

I thought of another way to look at souls. They are the part of your Pattern that gives you Agency. It might be composed only of Death, all the Subtle Arcana or something else, but let's focus on Agency.

To be more precise, a lack of a soul makes it harder for you to control your own destiny. This is shown in mortals by the progression of Soullessness and the benefits of high Integrity, as mentioned in the OP. Meta-souls make you more inclined toward certain destinies, and less toward others. For example:

Mortals who are dragged through the Thorns on their way to Arcadia suffer great damage to their souls. When they decide to take matters into their own hands and escape, they earn a Seeming and repair their soul with the first dot of Wyrd. Increasing this trait marks you for great narratives/destinies both fair and foul, with the Wyrd outside you providing a road, and the Wyrd inside giving you the capacity to walk another road. When the Gentry participate in a Feud over Titles, they aren't just keeping each other alive. They are striving toward Wyrd Transcendence, even if they don't know what that entails. This might allow them to become a "clean slate" somehow. Or maybe they're lying as always.

Ghosts have the Integrity they did when they died, and it doesn't change. This might be seen as a way to represent their unfinished business and how it prevents them from moving on. How they handle that (and others might have a hand in this) defines the next step in their destiny. This might mean the Inferno, somewhere in the Astral, maybe even the Supernal/Empyrean. Those that stay after finishing their business or rejecting it can also become Geister. After that, they can Bind themselves to a mortal, resulting in a gestalt entity with combined destinies. Perhaps some Geister delve further into the Underworld and become Kerberoi. A select few might have reached Deathlord status.

Mages are notable because of their singular drive to know. They have the tools necessary to follow any destiny they choose, with the greatest obstacle being all too human flaws and the ambitions of other Mages. This is true even when they become Archmages. Their struggle is primarily internal, as they have more than enough power to affect the external. This, I believe, is what makes them closer to humans than the other supernaturals. Though they have Wisdom instead of Integrity, they dream and desire much like mortals do. The Abyss is the anti-thesis of all that purpose and meaning/symbolism behind their Obsessions and Will-Working. It is the ancient terror of everything being for no reason, of all we find important being completely pointless. Becoming a Scelestus is, in one way or another, to Give Up. This is reflected in their tainted souls.

I would write paragraphs for the other game-lines, but this seems like enough to me. Do you agree or disagree? What other information about the setting can lend credence to or conflict with this line of reasoning?

[Elfive]

It's all a big tree. The onieroses are branches of the temenos, which is itself a branch of the anima mundi, which probably has other branches humans can't access, and may be a branch of the Supernal, which has branches leading to the old World of Darkness and Creation, maybe.

...Or maybe the Supernal and the Umbra are both branches of the Empyrean. I dunno.

[nofather]

If I recall correctly, the farther you get away from Earth in the Astral the more you come across planets and galaxies that have been taken over by the Abyss.

[wyrdhamster]

If all Astral is one shared soul of humanity and then the planet - then yes, theory about souls as connection have even more sense. If soul is your connection to humanity as a whole, logically you will not have access to common unconsciousness of it - i.e; no access to Astral.

But it also mean that Gaea is the soul of Earth as whole, and not the spirit in normal understanding.

[Satchel]

Point of order: there are spirits and ghosts in the Astral. Nobody's really sure how they get there, and "Begotten did it" can't really account for all of them or even most of them.

[cmwatford]

To add on to Elfive, astral travel is described in Astral Realms as traveling further into your own soul. In other words you go deep enough into any one persons soul and it becomes obvious that all souls are just extensions of a single oversoul that mages refer to as "The Astral".

Edit: I'm lumping in the Temenos as being an extension of the Anima Mundi here. Felt the need to clarify that.

[Elfive]

From what Dave's said it sounds like in 2e your onieros is your soul.

Or at least, your soul provides the landscape, while your mind shapes and populates it. When we call the Temeons the soul of humanity, we're being quite literal now. Onieroses are basically individual branches on a big soul tree.

Someone without a soul may have all the components necessary to build an onieros, but nowhere to put them, so to speak.

[amechra]

People without souls explicitly have no Onieros.

Where does it say that? Is it a 1e thing, or is it a 2e thing (I wouldn't put it past them to change some stuff up now.)?

[cmwatford]

Well... we don't know whether or not people who are Soulless can access the Astral (unless Beast has something on it somewhere?)

People without souls explicitly have no Onieros.

[amechra]

The issue with soul as spirit theory is that it doesn't take into account that souls are connected to, or part of, the astral.

Well... we don't know whether or not people who are Soulless can access the Astral (unless Beast has something on it somewhere?)

If being Soulless prevents you from hacking the Gibson accessing the Astral, then I'll mark it down as a property of the Soul. If not, well...

That might just be a feature of the human mind!

(Also, for all we know, there are rare Numina that allow Spirits access to the Astral, just like there are rare Numina that let them feed off of Ghosts or Angels.)